Page 21 of The Wicked Prince

But no.

Instead, she butchered a dress that cost more than most men would earn in their lifetimes.

John would recognize that white silk anywhere, he’d gone through a thousand fabrics before finding the perfect one. He should have had the servants take her wedding dress and box it up.

Robin had taken the skirts and fashioned some kind of loose, flowing trousers from them as well as a strange, flowing shirt, belted at her waist with another scrap of fabric, but sleeveless and tied around her neck.

But the good news was that considering the amount of fabric that had been in the skirt, she’d likely only destroyed the top layer in order to make her outfit.

John wasn’t sure what the purpose would be in salvaging the wedding dress other than that he’d designed it. It was beautiful, and he liked beautiful things.

The intense urge to close his eyes faded as he watched Robin move. To his surprise, she didn’t have a bow in her hands. She had a quarterstaff.

He didn’t need to look at the collection of information he’d amassed and kept in his room to know Robin using a quarterstaff as a weapon wasn’t in there. She used a bow. Always a bow.

Or in his case, her teeth.

She spun the staff around, fluidly shifting through her movements as she attacked the dummy again and again. She would dodge imaginary blows, throwing herself into rolls or springing back with a grace he didn’t see on even the most elegant dancers.

Although her makeshift outfit didn’t allow for much admiration of her form, John couldn’t look away. The silk whirled with her in a way that the longer he stood there by the window, leaning against the glass, the less he cared about her tearing the dress he’d designed to shreds.

His fingers twitched and he gave in. He grabbed his sketchbook and charcoal and pulled a chair up to the window to sketch. He wanted to sink his hands into her messy braid and unravel it, but since he couldn’t, this was the next best thing.

He didn’t let himself examine why he wanted to pull her hair loose and spill it over her shoulders like it had been the day she’d been brought before him other than the fact that Robin was an objectively beautiful young woman and he was a young man with a taste for the finer things in life who very much enjoyed beautiful things.

He could have feelings about her objective attractiveness that were completely separate from how fascinating he found her as a person. Now that he’d won and she was serving her political purpose, she was a hobby, like drawing, nothing more.

He’d promised to keep his hands to himself, and unlike some people, he kept his word. But he’d never promised he wouldn’t look.

Robin finished, sweeping the staff behind her as she stood up straight, panting for air, sweat dripping down her brow. She was smiling.

John hadn’t ever seen her smile. A real smile, not the fake thing she’d given to the crowds at their wedding upon his command.

John flipped the page and sketched faster than he had before in his whole life. Robin rolled her shoulders and started to head back to the cloak dropped on the ground, clearly done for the day.

John cursed at her.

He stared down at the half-started sketch. He hadn’t even gotten close. Who knew when he’d see that smile again to capture it?

His hour was up. His headache returned, but he set his sketching aside and went back to work.

That night, when Robin joined him for dinner, he couldn’t get the question out of his head. What had made her smile? He almost believed he’d hallucinated it because of the migraine, given how she scowled at him from across the very long table.

Why was this table so long?

And how long would it take Robin to notice if he had new tables commissioned an inch shorter in descending increments and every day had the table replaced with the next smallest until she was no longer what seemed like miles away?

They never really spoke during dinner. The tension was always too thick for words. Robin’s hatred was hot enough to heat the room as they inched deeper into autumn.

“How was your day?”

John only realized he’d spoken after the words had left him.

Robin narrowed her eyes so they were slits. “What are you doing?”

“I’d hoped that you’d have acclimated to polite society by now enough to recognize a simple pleasantry when it’s presented to you.” John was excellent at recovering even when he was the one who took himself by surprise.

“You might be simple, but you’re not pleasant.”

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